Under this rubric, we want
to relate interesting observations or interactions with fishes. Have
you observed some curious behaviour, amusing incidents, or strange
interactions involving fishes, or fishes and some other animals (including
humans)? Please tell us about your interesting (happy, sad, frightening,
amusing, perplexing, etc) fish encounters. We start this series of
fish stories with my – unbelievable but true – encounter
with a friendly wrasse.

Episode 1The Friendly Wrasseby Phil Heemstra

We were collecting fishes
at the Kamaran Islands off the Red Sea coast of Yemen in April of 1998.
I was one of four marine biologists crammed into the steel catamaran sailing
yacht ‘Breakwind’ (no lie – that is the name of the ship!).
Also on board, were the very able Captain Matthew Grimley (South African
who also designed and built the ship), First Mate Sean Kelly (also from
South Africa), the Captain’s fiancé, Emily Madghachian (Lebanese
/Canadian from Dubai), the ship’s mascot, Jessie, a small black and white
skipperkie , and the organizer of the expedition, Mr Jonathan Ali Khan
(entrepreneur / photographer from Dubai). The other marine biologists
were Jerry Kemp (Ph.D. student from the University of York, studying reef-fish
distributions in the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden); Uwe Zajonz (graduate student
from the Senckenberg Research Institute in Frankfurt, studying Red Sea
fishes) and Michael Eisinger (from the University of Essen, studying corals).

We (Uwe, Jerry and I) were
doing a fish collection in about 5 metres of water over a coral reef.
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a group of five or six fishes about
to overtake me. The leader of the pack was an adult male crescent-tail
wrasse, Thalassoma lunare, and he was busy chewing on something
that the other fishes seemed interested in.

Thalassoma lunare,
male.

(As you may have noticed, when
one fish in a group finds a piece of food, it will swim quickly away with
it, while the others immediately give chase and try to take the food away
from the fish that has it.)

I watched the wrasse working
its jaws, and saw something shiny at the front of its mouth. The
fish then veered right in front of me and spat out a small shiny object
that settled on a flat piece of coral immediately in front of me.
The fish’s action was as if to say, “Here, have a look at this!”
I was surprised to see that the small shiny object the fish had been
chewing on was a stainless steel screw about 5 mm long. I thought,
“That’s strange. I wonder where the fish found this? Maybe
it is something that Uwe or Jerry dropped or fell off their diving gear.”
I picked up the screw and put it in a pocket of my BC vest.

After the dive, back on ship,
I asked Uwe and Jerry if they had lost a small screw from their gear.
Neither recognized it as part of their kit, so I tucked it away in my little
cubbyhole (my living space was too small to be called a cabin). Diving
the next day, I was turning the knob on the second stage of my Oceanic
demand valve to adjust the breathing tension, when the knob fell off in
my hand. I then realized that the little screw that the friendly
wrasse had brought me was mine, and that it must have been spotted by the
wrasse as it fell out of the knob on my DV or soon after it landed on the
bottom. The wrasse then picked up the screw in its mouth, raced ahead
of me and dropped it right in front of me, as if to say, “Hey, you dropped
this!” I couldn’t believe it!

On my last visit to Umkomaas,
I heard dire reports of ‘Aliwal abuse’ and spearfishermen wiping out “bankies”
rockcods and knifejaws. How does one evaluate these allegations?
Here is an example of how the East Coast Fish-Watch Project can help
us learn more about fishes and what is really going on under the water.

To begin, we need to know
which fishes we are talking about. “Bankies”, also known as bank
steenbraas or fingerfins are members of the Family Cheilodactylidae:
including the bank steenbraas, Chirodactylus grandis; Natal
fingerfin,
Chirodactylus jessicalenorum; and the twotone fingerfin,
Chirodactylus brachydactylus). Rockcods, aka “groupers”, are
serranids of the genera Epinephelus, Cephalopholis, Plectropomus,
and
Variola. Knifejaws, also known (incorrectly) as “parrotfish”
are (at Aliwal Shoal) usually the Natal knifejaw, Oplegnathusrobinsoni
or the Cape knifejaw Oplegnathusconwayi.

Now that we knew what we
talking about, on our next dive, I asked the divers to count all of the
bank steenbraas and fingerfins they saw. I quit counting at 40, and
the other divers also reported the bankies as common.

I did not see any rockcods
or knifejaws on this dive, but talking to Mark Addison, I learned that
rockcods have never been all that common on Aliwal (which is to be expected
for a top predator like rockcods). If the rockcod population at Aliwal
has, in fact declined significantly (and this is quite possible), we cannot
blame the spearfishermen, until we know exactly how many rockcod
they are taking, compared to the catch of commerical and recreational anglers.

As for knifejaws, you have
to know where to look for them. They prefer certain areas on the
Shoal, and if one dives there, you will see lots of them. But their
populations may also fluctuate seasonally. Monitoring the fish
populations and the fisheries on Aliwal Shoal will not be easy, but one
of the first things we need to know is which species are there.
Once we have divers who can confidently identify the ‘threatened’ species,
then we can begin to do some real verification of what is going on there.

But based on my last dive,
the next time someone tells me that the spearos have wiped out all the
‘bankies’ on the Shoal, I will ask them “When was the last time you actually
dived on the Shoal?”